After leaving college she worked as an actress, singer and model[3] Her partying lifestyle in London in the 1980s earned her reputation as an It girl.[1]
For the ten years after she left Saint Martin's college she lived in England, New York and Los Angeles before moving to Lugano to become curator for her father's art collection.[4] During the war in 1991-1995 Croatian War of Independence she visited the country to help protect Croatia's heritage and artworks[1] and to help restore churches and paintings damaged during the fighting.[3]

Von Habsburg regularly participates in biennales by commissioning new works of contemporary art through a foundation called Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary which she founded in 2002 in Vienna Austria.[1] and has built up her own art collection with over four hundred pieces of contemporary video and digital art.[4] She also appeared as Queen Marie-Henriette in the production Kronprinz Rudolf (2006), directed by Robert Dornhelm.[citation needed] Since 2012, TBA21 has a new exhibition space in Vienna's second district, more precisely in a public park called Augarten. The exhibition space was therefore renamed Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary–Augarten. It exhibits works from the collection in thematic exhibitions twice a year. The Foundation also organises exhibitions of its collection worldwide.[citation needed] More recently, she has criticised her stepmother, Carmen Cervera, for the latter's management of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid after the 2012 sale of John Constable's painting, "The Lock".[5]

Francesca and Karl have been amicably separated since 2003.[3] Considering this separation, Karl's sister, Archduchess Gabriella, assumes, since their mother Regina's death in 2010, the rank of Grand Mistress of the Order of the Starry Cross that Francesca would normally have assumed otherwise.[7][8]